


Her Mother's Daughter

by Raine_Wynd



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Chuck Lives, Disabled Character, Future Fic, Jaegers, Kaiju, Multi, Parent-Child Relationship, Polyamory, Postpartum Depression, Slash, love is tangled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 17:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's her mother's daughter, ready to fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Mother's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to wyomingnot and YMFaery for helping on the early version of this fic.

Kaido Mori was twenty-one when the kaiju returned.

All of her life, she’d heard, “You’re Mako Mori’s daughter; be strong, proud, and never be afraid to fight for what you believe.” But when the kaiju returned, she was running late, her ancient car nearly died on the highway (again), and all she could think of was that her mother probably never had to use a car as a shield, there’s a hole in her left sock, and her best vintage Doc Martens will never be the same again.

For three days, all the media could talk about was the jaeger that had come out of nowhere to defeat the kaiju that had appeared. Kaido knew better; she’d gone out of her way to find a jaeger training program that was still active, and the trainers had stressed that while they might not have a jaeger to pilot, it was important that they knew how to fight in one. The training materials and equipment she’d seen and used hadn’t all had the patina of something salvaged from the Kaiju War days, either – there’d been rumors that the Pan Pacific Defense Corps was still around, working to ensure that future generations would not be unprepared for a return of the kaiju.

She’d graduated from the American program three months prior to this new kaiju attack, and the thrill she’d felt at that accomplishment had been marred by the fact that nobody wanted a freshly minted jaeger pilot. She couldn’t even tell her family what she’d done – they’d made it clear that she was not to go after this crazy dream, even if she was sure it was going to be needed. Diploma in hand, she’d gone back to waitressing, unwilling to return to Sydney, where she’d been born and raised, in defeat. She still needed money to get her degree in something useful so that her family could be proud of her. When the kaiju attacked, she’d been on her way to work at a waterfront restaurant.

The restaurant was trashed in the attack and the area had been cordoned off, so after one more attempt at trying to get past the blockade, she headed back to her apartment, listening to the news along the way. The report claimed that the jaeger that appeared was none other than the now-famous Echo Saber, a Mark IV that had been destroyed in an attack on Sydney during the last days of the Kaiju War. Kaido didn’t quite believe the report; as far as she knew, no functional jaegers remained, and the only one that was still in one piece was in the Hong Kong Kaiju War Memorial and Museum, formerly, the Hong Kong Shatterdome. Clearly, she’d been wrong.

Kaido stopped in her tracks when she saw a black-suited federal agent at her door, his badge clearly visible.

“Kaido Mori?” the agent asked.

“Yes?” Just then, her phone rang. “Excuse me.” A glance at the display indicated an unknown number, and Kaido frowned. “Hello?”

“Kaido, it’s Papa. Please go with the agent – it’s not safe in New Seattle anymore.”

“I’m fine,” Kaido insisted.

“You can argue with me when you get here. Everything’s already arranged. All you need is your passport and a change of clothes; we have everything else here. Oh, and something to read – you’re going to be on a long flight.”

Hearing the uncompromising tone in her papa’s voice, Kaido sighed and surrendered. “Please tell me you’re not doing this because you think I’m incapable of handling myself.”

Her papa chuckled. “Kay-Kay, if that was the case, then Raleigh and I wasted a hell of a lot of time teaching you how to fight. This is different. This is important.”

“Important how?”

“You’ll see when you get here. Now be a good girl for me and do this? I don’t want to explain to your mother that you didn’t want to be here.”

Kaido stared at the phone a moment, wishing that her papa had chosen to use video so she could see his face. “I told you I don’t care what my mother thinks. But you really think I should go?”

“Better hurry, Kay-Kay, before they shut down the airport. There’s already rioting in the streets downtown. Pack something you can fight in, if need be.”

A flick of her phone brought up a news app, and Kaido swallowed as she saw the hysteria that was starting to engulf the streets. Hastily, Kaido grabbed a backpack and filled it with her passport, a spare charger for her phone, and a few changes of clothing.

The agent drove her to the airport; Kaido was escorted through security, bypassing most of the long lines. The luxury helicopter she boarded was unmarked, but clearly designed for long transoceanic flight. Hours after leaving New Seattle, they landed at the Sydney Shatterdome. Like the rest of the world, she had thought the Sydney Shatterdome had become nothing more than an oceanographic research company’s headquarters, but as she landed, she realized that had to have been a cover. There are too many military vehicles for a simple company – and the freshly painted Pan Pacific Defense Corps symbol on the doors to the building was a dead giveaway.

The man waiting for Kaido to disembark from the helicopter was someone she hadn’t seen since she left Sydney at eighteen, determined to make her way without the shadow – and influence – of her famous family. It struck Kaido suddenly that her father looked tired and old in a way that he’d never looked before – and she indulged the need to run and hug him, hard. His once-blondish brown hair had streaks of gray in it, but his blue eyes were full of love as he returned the embrace. He wore navy cargo pants and a matching short-sleeved shirt, pressed military-crisp.

“Thought I told you to stay out of trouble,” Raleigh said gruffly, ruffling her reddish-brown hair.

“Thought I told you the same, Dad,” she shot back. “Oceanographic research, my ass.”

“Oh, it was oceanographic research all right,” he replied. “We just didn’t tell everyone we were monitoring the Breach.”

“And the jaeger? Where have you been hiding that?”

He grinned. “Hong Kong. Nobody expected the museum to have something that worked. We just figured it didn’t make any sense to rebuild it if it wasn’t usable some future day. Come on; your mother’s been looking forward to seeing you again.”

Kaido sighed, remembering even as a little girl that her mother had seemed so distant, so unable to focus on anything that wasn’t jaeger- or kaiju-related, though there were moments when her mother had been the best mom in the world. For the most part, though, it had been Raleigh Becket and Chuck Hansen who’d raised Kaido, and the fact that Kaido’s last name was the same as her mother’s had led her to ask boldly at eight who her father was. The fact that they’d immediately answered with ‘both of us’ had left her wondering for years whose genes she’d actually inherited. She had blue eyes, her mother’s facial features, and the broad build and height of her father. It wasn’t until she was sixteen and found her birth certificate along with a copy of a paternity test that she knew that Chuck was her biological father, but that Raleigh was listed as her father on her birth certificate. A conversation with her grandfather had revealed that Raleigh had been married to Mako at the time of her birth, and it was simply assumed that Raleigh had been her father. By then, Kaido didn’t care; she was proud to have been raised by two strong men.

Chuck’s survival was something of a miracle. His escape pod had almost been overlooked – but his father had refused to give up looking, swearing he could still feel his son alive. Crippled by the damage Striker Eureka had suffered trying to close the breach, Chuck had refused to be classified as disabled. Kaido remembered trying to outrun him as a little girl, but he’d send his service dog to retrieve her when she’d go too far.

By the time she was seven years old, Kaido had realized that the relationship between her father, her mother, and Raleigh was not a standard one. Raleigh and Mako had divorced by the time Kaido was two years old, and almost immediately, Raleigh and Chuck had gotten married. Yet Mako was a welcome presence in their home, and Kaido had seen that Mako never slept in the guest room when she came over.

Chuck had been the one to explain to Kaido that the love he had for Raleigh and her mother was something not everyone would understand or accept. “People who didn’t fight like we did don’t understand how to look at someone’s heart,” he’d told her.

Raleigh’s explanation had been more succinct. “I love your mother and I love Chuck. We saved the world. If people can’t handle that, you can say you’re Mako Mori’s daughter and that’s all they need to know.”

In the years since that explanation, Kaido had also seen how her mother had eventually stopped coming over to visit except on special occasions, like her birthday and Christmas. It had made Kaido reluctant to see her mother, who was never there when she needed her to be, though for her fathers’ sake, she tried to make the effort.

The memory faded as she looked at Raleigh now. “I can wait to see Mother. Where’s Papa?” Kaido asked now as they crossed the flight deck to the door into the Shatterdome.

“He’s meeting with the potential pilots for our newest jaeger.”

Kaido eyed her other father warily. “He’s not determined to co-pilot it, is he?”

Raleigh chuckled. “He was, until we did some testing and figured out that Chuck can’t manipulate the legs; it’s too much stress on his braces. Now Chuck teaches the new pilots how to move through pain.”

“How’d you get this up and running?” Kaido marveled. She’d known that her fathers and mother had been involved in some government project, but she’d always thought it was environmental rehabilitation work. The coastlines and ocean had suffered during the Kaiju War; the effort to restore them was ongoing.

“Private funding,” Raleigh told her. “We’ve had it since before we closed the Breach. When it became clear that the Pan Pacific Defense Corps would be shut down for good, despite what our scientists believed about the kaiju, we just found ways to continue that alternate revenue stream.” Raleigh laughed shortly. “Funny how the world is suddenly grateful we kept on going – that kaiju that hit New Seattle wasn’t like anything we’ve seen before.”

“Are the Echo Saber’s pilots okay?” Kaido asked, referring to the jaeger who’d successfully fought off the kaiju that had attacked, though not without damage to the jaeger.

“Shaken up, as to be expected, but they’ll be fine,” Raleigh assured her.

Kaido stopped in the hallway, realizing that Raleigh wasn’t leading her to the control room or to a guest room as she’d expected. All the signage indicated that the combat training room was the way they were headed; the control room and quarters were the other way. “Dad? Why am I here? If you’re expecting another kaiju attack, wouldn’t the safest place for me to be is somewhere in the Midwest?”

Raleigh shook his head. “Kaido, my dearest, darling daughter, your mother would have my head if I didn’t make sure you were here. Besides, don’t try to pretend as if you haven’t been training to be a jaeger pilot for the last five years. You dropped my name, kitten.”

Kaido flushed with embarrassment, both at being caught out and the childhood nickname. She’d thought that if she went to New Seattle and attended the so-called ‘doomsday academy’, she’d somehow escape her father’s notice. “Newt convinced me I should.”

“So he told me,” Raleigh said.

Startled, Kaido stopped. “He told you?”

“Kitten, Newt can’t keep secrets when he gets excited and thinks people should know.”

“But he promised!” Shocked and disappointed, Kaido stared at her father.

Raleigh sighed. “You can kick his ass about it later. Come, they’re expecting us.”

Kaido studied her father a moment. “Why aren’t you surprised the kaiju came back?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you insisting I go someplace safer?”

Raleigh met her gaze calmly. “You snuck off to train in a program most of the world thought it didn’t need. You’d have to go to the UK if you wanted to attend the other semi-official training program, and we'd already told you no, you weren’t moving to London. That left New Seattle. You really want to pass up the chance to prove it was worth it?”

Kaido stared at him.

Shaking his head and chuckling softly, Raleigh closed the distance between them, placing his hands on her shoulders. “You told me when you were five years old that you were going to be a jaeger pilot. You told Chuck that you dreamed that they were coming back with Gipsy Danger’s armor and that they were going to try to use it against us. We could’ve stopped training you in the art of the kwoon, Kaido. We didn’t. You snuck off, thinking we didn’t know – but kitten, we’ve always known you’d insist on being part of this, regardless of whether the kaiju came or not. I saw the news footage – you were right there when the kaiju made land, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t hurt. My Docs got ruined by the water and my car’s toast, but I turned off the car and stayed put.”

“Don’t lie to me, Kaido. You were helping people out of their cars. The security cameras caught you on tape, and a few were interviewed who said that a young woman matching your description helped them escape.”

Kaido lifted her head, refusing to feel embarrassed about what she’d done. She was more embarrassed that her father knew she’d tried to lie; she’d forgotten about the ubiquitous security cameras, and had thought the waterfront wasn’t under surveillance.

Raleigh stared at her. “So if I were to send to you to Kansas, you’d be fighting to get your ass here.”

“Yes, but – that would make it my choice to be here. Why does my mother’s desire to have me here matter?”

“Because she’s the Assistant Marshall, Kaido. I thought you knew that.”

Kaido’s eyes widened. “No, I didn’t know that. Wait – my mother’s in charge of this?”

Raleigh sighed. “Your grandfather is the Marshall, but in a lot of ways – yes, your mother’s in charge. We just follow her orders. Right now, the one I’m trying to follow is the one that says you need to be in the combat room.”

Suddenly, Kaido’s mother’s preoccupation with jaegers and kaiju made sense. If the return of the kaiju had been what Mako Mori been working on all this time, then it stood to reason that Kaido’s entire family was equally involved. Judging from her father’s uniform, Kaido realized that not only was the answer yes, but that she’d wasted a lot of time and effort in trying to fool them. Of course she’d want to be a jaeger pilot; it was in her blood. Of course they’d know she’d want this; she’d been telling them so all her life.

Raleigh didn’t let her wallow in the emotion, guiding her gently until they stepped through the doors to the kwoon combat room. A small crowd was already gathered to watch the test. Kaido saw her grandfather seated on a bench next to his son. Both men wore dress blue uniforms; Chuck’s Great Dane service dog rested quietly to Chuck’s right, wearing his own service uniform. That meant that what they were doing was back under UN graces; she remembered them telling her that they wouldn’t wear their dress uniforms again unless the Pan Pacific Defense Corps was reinstated.

As Kaido followed Raleigh into the room, she noted the fight in progress was between a dark-skinned woman and an even darker-skinned man. The fight wasn’t going well for the man, and he glared at Chuck when Chuck called, “Point to Pakshi.”

“Go change,” Raleigh told Kaido, pointing to the women’s lockers on one side of the room.

Kaido stared at him, shocked. “What, now?”

“You wanted this since you were five years old,” he told her gently. “As your dad, I might not want you out there fighting, but the kaiju that attacked New Seattle isn’t going to be the last.” He hugged her. “But I’m not going to stop you. Your mother is convinced you might be the key to finishing this war.”

“What does Papa think?”

Raleigh chuckled. “He’s already picked out who he thinks is going to be your copilot.”

Kaido’s blue eyes narrowed and she picked up the backpack she’d been carrying. “Oh, he has, has he? We’ll see about that.”

* * *

Raleigh hid a smile as he watched his daughter march off to change before moving over by the bench. Herc – who’d always be the Marshall to him more than his father-in-law – made room for Raleigh to sit on Chuck’s left as Pashki won the round.

Raleigh squeezed Chuck’s hand gently, their compromise for public affection. “You shouldn’t have goaded her in my name,” Chuck chided Raleigh.

“As if you wouldn’t have used mine,” Raleigh shot back. “You’ve heard Newt’s theories.”

Herc sighed. “I feel obligated to point out that’s your child you’re planning on sending out in harm’s way, for form’s sake. My granddaughter.”

“Yeah, well, old man, you sent me, your son, out there,” Chuck said blandly.

Herc chuckled briefly. “Like I said – for form’s sake. Do you think I would’ve agreed to this if I hadn’t seen Kaido’s simulator scores? Besides, if she snuck off to the US to train to be one of us, she’d find a way into a jaeger and drift with entirely the wrong person. Or worse, with a kaiju brain.” Herc shuddered. “Which reminds me – which one of you gets to sit on Newt and his assistant to make sure they follow the damn protocols we set up?”

“That’ll be me,” Raleigh said. “Permission to smack some sense into them if they get too wild?”

“Depends – the wild idea they had last time saved us,” Herc noted. “Use your judgment, Raleigh. I know you don’t like sitting on the sidelines.”

“Sure you wouldn’t rather be in a Jaeger?” Chuck asked quietly.

“I’d have to let someone else in my head again, and I don’t know if I can do that,” Raleigh replied seriously. “Bad enough I had to let you in for the calibration tests.”

Chuck snorted. “As if you didn’t enjoy what happened after,” he reminded his husband in a low voice.

Raleigh cracked a grin and started to reply.

“Hush you two,” Herc scolded. “Bad enough I have too much information thanks to the ghost drift; no need to tell the recruits.”

“Yes, Marshall,” Raleigh said crisply, straightening his posture. “Sorry.”

“You’re not, so don’t give me that bullshit,” Herc replied with a snort. “Is Kaido all right?”

“Tired from the flight, but this can’t wait. Much as I might want otherwise.”

“You’ve seen the data,” Herc reminded him.

“I’d rather not have our daughter here either,” Chuck said. “But she’s been determined to be one of us forever, Raleigh.”

Raleigh let out a breath. “Yeah.” Chuck gripped his hand briefly, and Raleigh returned the gesture. Raleigh kept his eyes on the fight as Pashki met her match in an Australian recruit. “How many more teams are we looking for?”

“One more,” Herc told him. “Pashki and Ryder will be piloting Delta Envoy, and we have the Parkes sisters in Aurora Lightning. That leaves Wolf Strike,” he said, referring to the brand-new jaegers that had been built in secret, in preparation for this day.

If Newt and Hermann’s calculations were correct, the kaiju were due to come in full force in three weeks; they needed all the manpower they could get. This time, it wouldn’t be enough to close the Breach; they needed to find a way to overpower what was clearly now a hybrid model kaiju. Echo Saber had barely fought off the new breed of kaiju – and the Shatterdome was going to be working furiously to install countermeasures in all of the jaegers. Not for the first time since he’d heard the terrifying vision Newt and Herman had shared more than twenty years past and his daughter’s alarming prediction a few years later, Raleigh cursed the idiots who – as predicted then – had drilled a tunnel in the ocean floor that essentially negated the sacrifices they’d made to seal the Breach.

They had one chance to make this work, and it would be with untried jaegers with his daughter as copilot in one of them. Part of Raleigh wished that Mako would step down from her role as the Assistant Marshall so they could pilot the newest jaeger, Wolf Strike, together, but she wouldn’t. The brief chance Raleigh had to drift with her again had been when they’d been testing Wolf Strike, making sure that it would be suitable for a new pilot team – and he’d seen her answer in the drift.

Choosing to follow her duty and be the Pan Pacific Defense Corps’ biggest advocate had been her mental salvation in the wake of overpowering grief at losing her adoptive father; Raleigh’s and Chuck’s love hadn’t been enough to keep her. The postpartum depression she’d suffered hadn’t helped, either, and nothing Chuck or Raleigh had said would change her mind. Raleigh had no doubt she regretted the night he and Chuck had gotten her pregnant (and no matter what the paternity test said, Raleigh knew Kaido was his daughter.) Mako had had a difficult pregnancy, one that had forced her to cut back on her efforts to keep the Pan Pacific Defense Corps alive. The resulting depression had made connecting to Kaido almost impossible. Though Raleigh and Chuck had tried to get Mako to remain with them, to make the connection to Kaido, Mako had been unable and ultimately unwilling to do so more than in the most token of ways.

With small shake of his head, Raleigh focused on the next combatants to step onto the mat. Kaido had braided her hair and pinned the tail up so it wouldn’t be in the way. She wore a navy blue tank and black exercise pants. For a moment, Raleigh was taken back to when he’d goaded Stacker into allowing Mako to fight him. Breathing deeply, Raleigh focused on the present, seeing his daughter’s opponent – a broadly built, muscular man with blond hair so pale it was nearly white – bow in respect to the evaluation team as Kaido did the same.

“Begin,” Chuck intoned.

“Who’s he?” Raleigh asked quietly.

“Steven Halvorsen; he’s from the UK. As you know, the British government didn’t believe the kaiju threat was completely over,” Herc said.

“What, another woman?” Steven demanded, shooting an annoyed look at the evaluation team.

“You got a problem with that?” Herc asked bitingly as he stood. “Because none of us would be here if Miss Mori and Mr. Becket didn’t shut the Breach.”

“No, sir,” Steven said, backing down quickly.

“Asshole,” Herc muttered, sitting back down. “And shut up, Chuck.”

Chuck’s lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything aloud.

Steven and Kaido resumed the fight.

“Kaido is kicking his ass,” Chuck observed unnecessarily a few moments later.

“Where’d you come from?” Steven demanded as Kaido forced him to the mat, scoring the first point.

“Same place you did, idiot,” Kaido shot back. “My mother’s womb. Got anything useful?”

That made Steven’s eyes narrow. “Sure. Let me see if you’re all talk and no action.” That proved to be his error; he’d been one of the top combatants in the room. When it was over, Steven stared at her.

“How the hell did you do that?” he demanded.

“Practice. Now go be a misogynist asshole with someone else,” she shot back. “Oh, and one other thing. I’m Kaido Mori.” Steven blanched as he realized who she was, and quickly left the mat. Turning, Kaido bowed to Herc, Chuck, and Raleigh. “Next?”

They went through five more candidates – two female, three male – before Daniel Averyanov stepped up to the mat. Like the other three male candidates before him, Daniel was supremely fit, but he walked onto the mat with none of the swagger of the other three. Nor did he project an aura of ‘you’ll thank me when this is over’ at Kaido. He had whipcord-lean look to him, and reminded Raleigh of the Wei triplets.

“This your pick?” Raleigh asked Chuck, who shook his head.

“Figured she’d go for the last one,” Chuck said with a rueful laugh.

“Who is he?” Herc asked.

“His parents emigrated when they closed the Russian Shatterdome; they were repair techs. He’s grown up here,” Chuck replied.

Daniel took first point; Kaido the second, and Raleigh swore he could see the sparks flying between them. By the third, hard-won point, Raleigh was certain of it. Raleigh became aware that Mako was in the room, watching; he’d always been able to find her anywhere since they’d drifted together, but he knew she’d bolt if he came near. The fourth point was a draw, and Kaido barely won the fifth.

Turning his head, he looked over his shoulder to see his former co-pilot, ex-wife, and mother of his child (paternity tests be damned) slip out of the room. Unable to stand the détente they’d developed, Raleigh hurried to catch up with her.

“Mako, please, wait.”

“Kaido chose well,” Mako said, stopping.

“I’m proud of her, too,” Raleigh said, “but I’m sick of feeling like the other half of my soul is shutting me out. It’s been twenty years, Mako. I haven’t stopped loving you. You saw that when we drifted last week, testing out the new jaeger.”

“You chose Chuck.”

“Because you left us.” Raleigh pushed, but he knew what he’d seen in the drift: regret mixed with the love she would deny for both of them, love she wouldn’t let herself have because she’d made vengeance her mistress.

Mako closed her eyes briefly. “It’s too difficult, Raleigh. We’ve made choices.”

“Don’t you think that stopping the apocalypse again counts for something?”

Mako smiled briefly, but it didn’t quite light her eyes. “Thank you for raising our daughter to carry on the tradition. If you’ll excuse me, I’m needed in the control room.”

Though he’d been hoping for more emotion than that, Raleigh sighed and let her go. He turned to find Chuck standing behind him, one hand on his Great Dane for the balance support Chuck would always need.

“I know, I know, I keep doing this to myself, why do I keep on doing it, I’m beating a dead horse, but…I miss her, Chuck. I always will. And after drifting with her again last week – I know how she feels, and it hurts to see it. All this thirst for vengeance…it’s done something to our Mako.”

“Always the romantic idiot, tilting at windmills,” Chuck said softly. “Trying to build things that’ll just get smashed to pieces.”

“Your romantic idiot,” Raleigh corrected, a half-smile on his face as he caught the jab to his efforts on the anti-kaiju wall. Still, he stepped closer so that Chuck could wrap an arm around him.

“Like I could forget,” Chuck said dryly, but he let his husband lean on him briefly. “Kaido and Daniel are matched now; we should make sure they don’t make the same mistakes we all did.”

“What, thinking that drift compatibility means that you’ll have happily ever after together? That you can coast on what lingers after the drift instead of actually talking? Or that the drift’s enough; you don’t need to say anything?” Raleigh asked roughly. “What happened to ‘let’s just get through the apocalypse’ first?”

Chuck laughed softly and brushed a kiss on Raleigh’s lips. “We tried that, remember? Failed miserably, too. You’re the one who convinced me and my dad we needed to actually use sentences, paragraphs even. Besides, Kay-Kay needs something to live for, not something to prove.”

“She’s gonna hate us for meddling.”

Chuck snorted. “Which is why we’re going to talk to Daniel.”

* * *

The test run for Wolf Strike was the next day. Kaido was grateful Raleigh helped her put on the drive suit. She was nervous.

“Your papa will walk you to the cockpit,” Raleigh told her as he closed the fastenings on the outer suit.

“Where will you be?”

“Manning the neural override,” he replied. “If you and Daniel are anything like me and your mother, it may be a futile effort. Do us all a favor and don’t chase the RABIT, whatever it is. If you or Daniel start to chase the RABIT, find your way back to the present by listening to each other, talking to each other. Speaking of, did you two talk last night and get to know each other better? That way, you’re less surprised in the drift?”

Kaido nodded. “I told him about you and Papa.” She hesitated, then added, “About how Mother wasn’t really around, even when she was home. He said he envied me; his parents died last year in a car accident. Dad, what if we accidentally do something?”

“Don’t fret about it,” Raleigh advised her as he opened the door to her quarters. Chuck stood outside, his dog by his side as always. “Just focus on moving through the test.”

With a deep breath, Kaido stepped out into the hallway. The drive suit felt heavier than the training suits she’d worn back in the US; each step seemed to require more effort.

“You can walk faster than this,” Chuck told her firmly. “Start believing that you can move through anything, Kay-Kay.”

She glanced up from her feet in time to see Raleigh press a kiss to Chuck’s mouth before stepping aside and moving swiftly down the corridor. “It just feels awkward.”

“It’ll feel worse when you’re hooked up,” Chuck told her as they moved down the hallway. “Now, pick up your feet. That’s it, come on, stride like you mean it, kid. Leave your old man in the dust. He’s got a dog to lean on and legs with metal braces; you can walk faster than that. You’ve _always_ been able to walk faster than that. And Kaido?”

Kaido stopped and turned to look at him. “Yes, Papa?”

“I love you; I’m proud of you. Don’t forget that. Now go. Daniel is waiting.”

Kaido smiled and walked briskly into her future.


End file.
